Closer to Truth . Ask the Experts . Nancy C. Andreasen M,D., Ph.D.

Why did you become a scientist?

“I knew if this had happened to me 50 years earlier, 100 years earlier, I probably would've been dead.”

I began my career as an English professor. I have Ph.D. in English Lit and became pregnant and developed [a disease]. I was on IV antibiotics for a week before returning to teaching, and that was a pivotal experience that really changed my life. Because having the Renaissance as my field in English Lit, I knew if this had happened to me 50 years earlier, 100 years earlier, I probably would've been dead. I spent the next summer contemplating, got my first book on John Donne accepted for publication, and instead of feeling elated, I felt kind of discouraged. And I said to myself if I had taken the same amount of effort that I put into writing that book, and applied it a field like medicine, I might actually produce something. So I decided to go to medical school and to have a career in research. And when I saw my first psychiatric patient, somebody with schizophrenia, the questions raised by what that person was experiencing were so intriguing that I was just hooked.

What are the key developments in your field?

As I look at things right now, there are two levels of knowledge that are building very, very rapidly, and one level is the level that I primarily work in, which is the application of technology of imaging tools to map the mind. How does the human mind focus its attention? How does it remember? How does it experience emotions and so on? And then the other, which is at the level of the molecule on the cell, is the whole contribution that's coming from genetics, genomics, proteomics and that's the same mapping of life at the cellular level is just burgeoning. And these two things are happening at the same time, very often by people who don't interact with one another. They're really two quite different disciplines with different training and so on, but it's evident to many of us that the power of combining across those levels, the very fine cellular or molecular level and on the other hand the systems, the power of doing that is just going to break open tremendous knowledge. We have an exciting century ahead of us.

What advice do you have for young people?

It's important to recognize that you're going to have a lot of failures, especially if you're a gifted person you're going to receive a lot of criticism and so you have to be willing to accept rejection over and over and pick yourself up and persist even if people doubt you or turn down your papers or whatever they happen to do, so persist and work hard. I guess another important thing is to find something that you really think is important that you care about passionately and pursue that.